The constant connections and disconnections increase the amount of signaling network traffic, which lowers the performance of the network overall, and passes the torch onto the network operators and forcing them to increase bandwidth and network access. To date, carriers have been able to invest in 4G and LTE networks to boost network capacity in hotspots. However, these solutions are reaching their limit. LTE and 4G are also showing that the perceived capacity of added bandwidth is causing users and applications to increase usage and data consumption. In the long run, it might add to the congestion problem rather than help.
While mobile or broadband networks may be designed for high-throughput of large amounts of data, they were not necessarily tailored to service the mobile applications that require frequent, low-throughput requests of small amounts of data. Existing networks also do not take into account different types of mobile traffic and priorities of the different types of traffic, for example, from a user experience perspective.
Such transactions put the mobile device radio in a high-power mode for a considerable length of time—typically between 15-30 seconds. As the high-power mode can consume as much as 100× the power as an idle mode, these network-initiated applications are power hungry and can quickly drain battery. The issue has been exacerbated by the rapid increase of the popularity of applications with network-initiated functionalities, such as push email, news feeds, status updates, multimedia content sharing and other mobile applications, etc. Furthermore, the problem with constant polling is that mobile phones also rely on signaling to send and receive calls and SMS messages and sometimes these basic mobile functions are forced to take a backseat to unruly applications and other mobile clients.